1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a biodegradable toothpick.
2. Description of Prior Art
Toothpicks made of wood, or respectively of quills, have been known for decades and are commercially available. Such toothpicks are therefore made of a biodegradable material, but have various undesirable side effects. Wooden toothpicks can splinter or break and are often hygienically undesirable. If wood splinters enter between teeth during cleaning, they are hard to remove and hardly decompose, even over long periods of time. The danger of individual wood fibers or small wood splinters entering the gums during cleaning of the teeth is not inconceivable. Inflamed gums often result.
Toothpicks made of quills pose such dangers to a much smaller extent. However, one problem is that quills are a natural product and accordingly can be inconsistent. Quills often have sharp edges in particular and therefore lead to injury to the gums.
These problems have long been known, and accordingly various toothpicks made of other, particularly non-biodegradable materials, are also commercially available. Toothpicks made of plastic or metal, as well as metal-coated plastic toothpicks, are particularly known. All such toothpicks have the advantage that they appear to be extremely sanitary, can be technically reproduced and accordingly can have exact shapes, so that the danger of injury is virtually eliminated. But metal or metal-coated toothpicks in particular are relatively expensive and therefore are intended for repeated use, which does not conform to sanitary concepts.
A further problem is that toothpicks are often placed on the edge of a food plate after use and in this way get into the kitchen along with the remnants of the food, which is often used as animal feed. In this case such toothpicks can result in injury to the gums of animals.
Finally, toothpicks are sometimes also used in the preparation of food, for example for maintaining pieces of meat in a relative position to each other during preparation. Typical examples are thin, rolled-up pieces of meat which are fixed in this way, or the placement of a piece of bacon around a sausage. Toothpicks are also often used in the preparation of cordon bleu. With all these applications there also is the danger that the consumer places the hardly visible toothpick into his or her mouth and can become injured in this way. This is a particular problem for persons with artificial teeth, which will hardly notice this condition and therefore the toothpick can enter the throat.